Week Ahead March 3-7: Elections and Ukraine Are Brussels’ Focus

Brussels has a slightly empty feel to it next week with few big events on the horizon here, although the crisis in Ukraine and the approach of the European Parliament elections will continue to reverberate.

On Monday, an emergency meeting of European Union foreign ministers, called at the weekend, will discuss the crisis in Ukraine. Foreign policy chief Catherine Ashton heads to Kiev on Wednesday as the EU continues to work to put together some kind of assistance package for the new government. She originally planned her Kiev visit for Monday.

Advertisement

Baroness Ashton is scheduled to meets Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov on Thursday as concerns spike over what appears to be Moscow’s intervention in Ukraine’s Crimea region. On Friday, European Council President Herman Van Rompuy spoke with Russian President Vladimir Putin about the latest developments.

The two big economic events next week are European Central Bank chief Mario Draghi’s testimony Monday at 1500 CET at the European Parliament and the EU executive’s report on Europe’s macroeconomic imbalances, which tracks member state’s records on issues from budget deficits to trade balances and private debt. Economics commissioner Olli Rehn will present the report at a press conference Wednesday at 1230 CET.

On Thursday and Friday, Europe’s center-right leaders travel to Dublin to choose the European People’s Party’s lead candidate for this May’s European elections. Former Luxembourg Prime Minister Jean-Claude Juncker has the best chances to snatch the candidacy, after picking up endorsements from Germany’s Christian Democrats and Greece’s New Democracy earlier this week. But EU watchers will also look out for signs from national leaders on whether they would support the winning candidate’s appointment as president of the European Commission.

Corrections and amplifications: This article has been amended to reflect the weekend’s decision to call a foreign ministers’ meeting on Monday, and Baroness Ashton’s consequent postponement of her visut to Kiev until Wednesday.

About Real Time Brussels

The Wall Street Journal’s Brussels blog is produced by the Brussels bureau of The Wall Street Journal and Dow Jones Newswires. The bureau has been headed since 2009 by Stephen Fidler, who was previously a correspondent and editor for the Financial Times and Reuters. Also posting regularly: Matthew Dalton, Viktoria Dendrinou, Tom Fairless, Naftali Bendavid, Laurence Norman, Gabriele Steinhauser and Valentina Pop.